Famous Rejection Letters

For any aspiring writer, a rejection letter, regardless of the provenience of said letter, is one of the most dreaded of objects. In this line of work getting rejected is considered a sort of literary murder – people are knowingly destroying something you’ve spent time on, and a lot of it. But the thing is everyone got rejected, more or less. I can think of very few instances when writers found publishers/agents from the first try. Or the second, or the tenth.

Editors/agents are quite human. So they make mistakes. But it’s not just about that, like one publisher wrote Frank Herbert while rejecting Dune ( I might be making the mistake of the decade, but …) It’s more along the line of literary preferences. I know publishing is an industry, and I know that it’s all about business decisions, but editors/agents make those decision on account of their own ideas of how a book should look or what it should do, and they have to be able to sell it. It’s like giving your novel to a lot of random strangers. If you’re unlucky, you might even get a long streak of people who won’t like your story.

Agatha Christie got 500 rejections, and then went on to sell more books than anyone else on the planet, with the exception of Shakespeare.

J.K. Rowling got 12 rejections, before making a billion dollars out of Harry Potter, and breaking all sorts of ridiculous records in terms of book sales.

Dr. Seuss got a rejection letter than went like this, “Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.” Of course, he didn’t give up.

“I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.” – this is how the youngest writer ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature was rejected.

“We feel that we don’t know the central character well enough.”- this is what J.D. Salinger got for The Catcher in the Rye, which is probably famous just because the narrator has such a clear and interesting voice.

“It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.” – this one was addressed to Hemingway.

William Golding received something like this, “An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.” Of course, he didn’t give up, and his masterpiece, The Lord Of The Flies sold 15 million copies.

It took Gertrude Stein 20 years before getting her first poem published.

As I said earlier, Frank Herbert got rejected 20 times, John Grisham got rejected 25 times, even the very prolific/rich/famous Stephen King got a dozen rejection letters for Carrie.

“Too radical of a departure from traditional juvenile literature.” – The Wizard of Oz

Even notorious bestsellers, like Twilight ( got rejected 14 times) or The Help (60 rejection letters) stand as proof to the fact that rejection is a part of a writer’s life.

“An endless nightmare. I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book.” – War Of The Worlds, H.G. Wells.

“Our united opinion is entirely against the book. It is very long, and rather old-fashioned.” – Moby Dick.

Even James Joyce, who some consider to be the supreme literary genius of the past century received 22 rejections for The Dubliners, before it finally got published. He sold three hundred books in the first year, out of which 120 were bought by the author himself.

“An absurd story as romance, melodrama or record of New York high life.”- rejection letter for The Great Gatsby

Alex Haley wrote for eight years before selling his first short story. Eventually he went on to win the Pulitzer. Much like Norman Mailer, who got his fair share of rejection letters before winning the Pulitzer also. Twice.

Jack Kerouac, George Orwell, Mario Puzo, all of them got their fair share of rejections.

To end this post on a positive note, I believe that the only thing a writer can do is write. And he has to persevere at this task. If he starts the day thinking about getting published, about landing that six figure deal, or just finding an agent, if he writes with the thought of having to write something brilliant, because anything short of brilliant won’t impress the agents, he’s just putting unnecessary pressure on his shoulders.

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203 thoughts on “Famous Rejection Letters”

What I’d like to know is who is writing all these interesting rejection letters. The ones I’ve been collecting all assure me that while they are sure my [piece of crap] work would be [less vomit-inducing] fabulously interesting to another [clueless] agent [with time on their hands], they themselves are too [successful and busy] successful and busy to give it the [complete overhaul] attention it [so desperately needs] deserves.

I’ve always had this strange relationship with Joyce’s prose. I mean, I can actually realize that technically speaking, his stuff is brilliant. All of it. Stylistically is beyond perfect. Some of his passages are wonderful. I know he changed the art of storytelling and broke many conventions, but I just don’t like most of the stories themselves. They leave me with this strange feeling…

I can quite see why you mightn’t like most of James Joyce’s stories. That strange feeling that you talk about is something that resonates with me too but I don’t find it an unpleasant strangeness. Perhaps that’s where Irishness comes in? Have you read his poetry. I find it surprisingly simple and appealing ~ unexpected might be the best word.

I just had to comment on this. Feeling obliged to do an ‘Irish’ post on St Patrick’s Day I could do no better than list the Irish writers who came immediately to mind. Formidable – certainly the land of great writers!

I’ve had plenty of rejection letters in my time, and I’m sure I’ll have a few more over the years. However I’m learning how to write better and I’ve got a short story coming out in a month-and-a-half. At the very least, that shows improvement, right?

Gosh. It almost makes it seems that you’re not a proper writer until you’ve been rejected a dozen times or more… Heartening stuff! :) Very strange response to Catcher in the Rye. Clearly this particular publisher wasn’t very good at his job. (I’m assuming it’s a he, given the time period).

The reader must be excused for passing on “Catcher.” It’s a prime example of the “Unreliable Narrator,” and requires a lot of reading between the lines. Most reviews, positive though they might have been, also missed the point, calling the work a rejection of adult “phoniness,” a coming-of-age, AYM sort of thing. The Cliff’s Notes coverage doesn’t even include the primary thematic word.

HI Rosie,
The Moral; yes, that reminds me that I once wrote a children’s book and the rejection letter said ” we do not publish children’s stories with morals in them…” So much for literature forming a generation….

That’s the sad reality of the publishing industry, isn’t it? As hard as they try to ensure they’re backing quality and only quality, even the best agents and editors are fundamentally unqualified to make a judgment call for a work on behalf of the public – tastes and market conditions vary too widely. This is plainly observable in the fact that almost every published book is relatively unsuccessful, and almost every successful book (by first-timers, that is) was rejected several times before acceptance. With literary experience, you may have a reasonable idea as to whether a work stands up to itself, but no one person can really say how it will stand up to the world. It all hinges on little more than an educated guess.

So, a writer can only keep on writing, keep on persevering, and hope that one day the stars will align just right to establish a chain of confidence from their work to the world.

I think we are even less qualified to make such a call – we’re too close to the material. No one really can, though; that’s my point. So it becomes a matter of a work not only playing to the tastes of its author, but (assuming a traditional route) also an agent, then an editor, then a publishing house, then the house’s perceived conditions of the market, then the distributors, the retailers, and finally the consumers.

Can a work pass all these tests and fail to gain traction with readers? Or can it get shot down along this path, but eventually become beloved by the public? Demonstrably yes on both accounts. That’s just the inherent flaw of the human element. There are so many variables up in the air. And that’s the system we’re working in – it takes a lot of right-place-right-time to make a success. So we keep on writing, keep on putting ourselves out there, and maybe we’ll eventually see the cogs click into place.

Great page Cristian, with a message for all of us, visual artists too, and really quite encouraging. I once received a letter from the Crafts Council of Great Britain saying that my “glass painting was unnecessarily crude”. I was crushed.
Now I’m off to read some of your short stories!

I’ve known about these rejections, but not the statements in some of them. I don’t know if its because of how society and technology have developed, and I’m not sure if there’s actually a study on it–but comparing today’s amounts of rejections (on average) that an author gets compared to the last century, would you say that today an author who knows how to handle querying and writing tends to receive less rejections than those that came before? Citing Agatha Christie’s 500. Today, you’d really have to be doing something wrong to go through that many).

Last I checked, 99% of rejections today occur because the writer sends it to the wrong type of agent. I believe Noah Lukeman (Literary Agent, New York) is the source of that statistic.

170 sounds more believable these days. The real problem in querying for most people is having no guide on how. The agent I mentioned, Noah Lukeman, is the only literary agent to my knowledge that actually wrote about the subject.

Love! Although honestly, I would have rejected Hemingway and Golding, too. To this day, I just cannot see the appeal of The Lord of the Flies.

Let us not forget that a whole lot of crap does manage to make it through (50 Shades, anyone?), but that doesn’t mean their stuff is better than yours. It just means they were extremely persistent.

The nice thing about blogging is I don’t have to worry about rejection. I write what I want, when I want, and no one tells me what I need to add or delete. While I would love to publish a book at some point, there is a certain freedom in remaining unpublished and unknown. The more blog followers I have, the more pressure I feel to produce something enjoyable, important, thought provoking…Sigh.

Some of these statements seem deliberately mean, as if they are relishing in the abuse they heap on the writer. Perhaps many of them were jealous. Lacking talent and the promise of their own name on a cover, all they can manage is…a letter.

I was born a SF and Fantasy writer, then along the years things changed. I used to be rather frustrated because I just couldn’t come up with a “normal idea.” But to answer your question, yes, I am primarily a fiction writer: I write short stories, novellas, and novels. But I do like to experiment and have some fun now and then, so I did write scripts for hour long TV dramas, movie scripts, comic book scripts. I also write essays, if you consider the most coherent posts on this blog as such.

I even wrote 4 chapters of a memoir type of thingy.

What I don’t write is poetry. I admire the form, I derive insane amounts of pleasure and inspiration from it, but it just eludes me. Quite frankly, I can’t process how someone can actually write like that. And I do agree with Faulkner when he said that poetry is the most difficult form of writing.

Kerouac was rejected for years, and then On The Road went massive! And Orwell was turned down by T.S. Eliot for the quite brilliant Down Out in Paris and London. I think some Book Publishers just get incredibly snobbish about their position sometimes.

I always feel like a voice calling in the desert when I say I don’t care about publishing (or money, or fame); I just want to make my art (write my stories and books). Am I alone? Are there any other writers who just don’t care about being accepted, share their work on the internet, prefer a simple life and do some freelance jobs (writing, translating) a couple of hours a day that enable them to create 100% what they – and not some agent, some public trend, or sponsor wants? Would love to find someone who just thinks this whole “getting published” thing is antiquated since we can spread our stories to our own modest audience through the internet. They’ll know how to find us. Just want to ask if *anybody* agrees when I say it again: Publishing is overrated.

Fantastic post… Writers need to write, and there will be failure and as you have shown. Rejection from others should not discourage as all it takes is one ear then a voice and your work becomes your own. The reviewers on this post are also pretty darn good…

I have often wondered if the correlation between many great novelists and high initial rejections is the same as between education and students: just as we meet calculus and eigenvectors when we are not ready to understand what they could do and later wonder at how much they underpin our material evolution, so do the authors who find a new voice struggle against the prevailing culture then seem so necessary to our linguistic evolution years later.

good thing you shared this post, it should be read by those who aspire to become a writer. :) I do tell myself all the time never take rejection seriously instead use it to motivate yourself to become a better person and become a better writer. Great post, thumbs up!

funnyphilosopher, don’t worry about it! Writers are in this together. Don’t let rejections get you down; they’re part of the business. I’m about to start querying as well. Just believe in yourself and write for your enjoyment!!

Thank you, Cristian, for this post. Rejections are always beastly. It’s nice to keep in mind, though, that sometimes they are not an indication on the merit of the work. Rather, they are usually just personal opinion!

Ah, encouraging to read! Good to know all these great writers had their challenges in their early days. I knew about several of them, but you added to the list! Just shows that it is important to keep faith in what you’re doing, and not give up! ~ Sheila

A great reminder that if you believe in your work, you should keep trying to find the right audience for it, and keep making it. People get rejected all the time, for jobs, relationships, you name it. It is good to see that even highly successful people with excellent work have had their fair share, too. It reminds us in the arts, it’s very subjective, and no one is likely to be an instant success. We just don’t see the many hurdles they’ve overcome, by the time we learn of their work.

Great post Christian! I always believed them, and I started submitting when I was about 10. I think part of the key to that is that if you believe in the story, you keep polishing as well as submitting. I did neither.

Where did you find out about all these great writers getting all those rejection letters? And do you think that traditional publishers, agents, are afraid to give the heads up for a novel that is not “traditional”, being the type of genre of Grisham or any of those who sold millions, because their careers maybe at stake and they don´t want to take the chance with a newbie?

Various websites and blogs and Wikipedia. And, yes. Kind of. What agents and publishers consider to be non-traditional, they also consider to be difficult to market and/or figure out a target audience. After all, it’s infinitely more difficult to establish a niche than to find one, so if you’re work is different than anything else ever written, then it kind of makes sense for publishers and agents to be reluctant.

I think the post is more positive than you give it credit for. It’s a nice reminder that rejection isn’t the end. All of these writers went on to be renowned. Not that everyone will be, but rejection doesn’t define you.
My only problem with rejection is that it’s radically impersonal anymore. Yeah, the form email is less of a stab, but it also means you weren’t worth the time. And that’s if they bother to even reject you!

This is great. I have to say I am secretly happy to see “Twilight” got rejected multiple times. I still think it’s awful and I never could get through more than 3 pages. Guess I’ll feel better if my own future book gets a bunch of rejections!

Yes. All writers know what you mean. I have found that most editors/publishers are basically looking for a reason to say no, rather than a reason to say yes. I believe it is because they are afraid of making a mistake and the publisher will blame them… ANYHOW: You can add this rejection to the list: “Nobody cares about a Saudi princess.” This was for my book PRINCESS: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia. Only two publishers wanted the book: About 20 editors turned it down. William Morrow & St. Martins. William Morrow got it in a bidding war. NOW, 20 years later this timeless story is still selling worldwide and has sold around 8 million copies. We all just keep trying despite the negativity…

I believe rejection builds your character, it is an essential element that gives you a firm resolve to carry on your passion and stay on your course. One must have a mission and vision in life and self belief that there is an important role to play in the community that God has placed them in. Thank you Cristian , keep on writing

Thank you for such a confidence building post. Receiving a decline, and I say that versus rejection because rejection implies rejecting you, versus declining an offer you are making, and this is a big difference. One of my colleagues suggested creating a goal to achieve a number of declines and this is a great way to get into a more positive mindset to put yourself out there.

Thanks, i really enjoyed that, it helps to keep things in perspective as we all get knocks where our writings concerned at some point. Everyone has different tastes and different ideas of greatness but I think as long as one person gains some joy or pleasure from something you’ve written, then you’ve succeeded and should be proud. Thanks for sharing :)

It is consolable for aspiring writers and artists to see these successful people once had rejections. But it is certain that most of us, including myself, will not have the luck that they had. I shall gladly accept rejections, as they are the price I pay for the joy I gain from doing what I am doing.

Cartoonists also suffer from the pain of rejection letters. I’ve tried to get my comics syndicated several times and each rejection is more painful than the last. It is articles like these that keep that spark alive! Thank you. And thanks for visiting my site!

It’s good to hear that rejection can be part of what writers receive and they just keep on going anyway. I like the idea of just writing because it’s what you do. You do it very well. It’s very “human” the way you write.
Cheers Cristian.

Weel, there are so many aspiring writers, and so many busy editors! It’s just out of pure happenstance that a good writer gets published. The serendipitous moment when a good writer and an editor that digs your writing happens is something out of the world of luck or fate. Imagine the possibilities! So, why not publish your own digital books? That can happen really fast as soon as your have your manuscript digitally ready. My advise, don’t wait, do it yourself and advertise it yourself. In the meantime.

Yes, you can do that! There are so many places to advertise & promote your own books or ebooks too. You can sell your books on amazon or even ebay if you think they are ready. Don’t wait! You can always try sending them to publishers besides finding authors somewhere else where you would never expect it much! Never know when working on the Internet!

Well, i’ve been thoroughly rejected by every literary magazine and contest in Canada, but i don’t know if that necessarily makes me a good writer! I think the one i enjoy the most is the one that said, ‘Too bad. we would have given you the prize, but you used too many words.”
Thank you for this, and i wish for you success in your own writing.

My first job out of University was to read the unsolicited manuscripts, separate the ones that had potential from the ones that didn’t, and write the rejection letters with constructive feedback for how the authors could improve their work. It was mentally exhausting, and such an eye-opener. My advice to writers: keep at it, but let your manuscript lie in a drawer somewhere for a few months after the first draft. Re-read it. Improve it. Get it to the best it can be. Do this as many times as you need to, and only submit it to a publisher or agent when it is the absolute best that you can make it. Good luck!

Cristian! You are absolutely amazing! You know so much about other authors & have told of their lives when others have not known which makes it quite interesting for me & my work besides making websites & learning how to publish a website using open source code. That is the same in a way because if not any publisher, you wouldn’t be able to put anything on the internet either. Happy you can follow my blog as well on wordpress!

Thanks for this post…Stephen Barr told me that even though my manuscript was “poise and plush” it wasn’t what he was looking for….Then Ann Behar told me my character was 2 dimensional…I was like Yeah….I always read where authors said that the agent said their character was 1 dimensional so I felt like I made progress….Haven’t query in a while…maybe it is time to start again!!

Excellent post. I agree completely that ultimately the only thing you can do is write. Enjoy the process, write for yourself, have fun with it. Don’t measure your success by whether someone else wants to buy it or not. Measure it by how you feel about the work and how you feel about your growth as a writer.

This is really wonderful, and contains info for writers who may be feeling downright bad about rejection slips and letters. I also enjoy your style: bright/light and not serious even when conveying very weighty matters.

Before rejections arrived as emails, even standard rejections with no signature arrived on very high quality stationery that was suitable for papering garret walls. Need to complete wall papering? Send out more stories and poems. Today, if you are over 50, your literary journal submissions are being first read by MFA graduate students who are very unaccustomed to your style of writing and the design of your structure. Rejections, however, halt only those without the imperative to write. Writers write their entire lifetime. Thanks for following my blog. At 72, I’m still writing or editing every day.

The most depressing thing here, though not unexpected, is the recurrent message, “It’s unusual, it’s different, so it won’t sell.” It shows how unimaginative many of these people are, but also how the publishing industry has been able to jog along rejecting the original in favour of the safe.

However, of course some successes are controversial. I personally think the Dune series is much overrated and no doubt there are better SF books out there that never get published. The response to Hemingway sound heartfelt and I might half agree with it.

As an East European, you might be amused by George Orwell’s rejection for Animal Farm on the grounds that the publisher didn’t publish children’s stories.

Ah yes, those of us who write know how it feels to be rejected. I am in a women writers group filled with some fabulous writers. Some have done the self-publishing route and are selling. I highly suggest the books you can get for your digital readers! Authors: Lisa Nowak (YA but also great for adults), Patricia Lichen Kidnapping the Lorax ending is a shocker!), Alice Lynn, Kris Knorr (so funny) .
I write poetry and get such good responses when I do open mikes and read to the class, but afraid to try publishing. I did win first place in a poetry contest and received $100, also won State fair, so must do okay!

The people who write rejection letters are often little more than motivated receptionists. My first job out of college was at a publishing house, and though I was an “editorial assistant”, whatever that is, I sometimes filled in for the receptionist. Between the two jobs, I was meant to open the unsolicited submissions and send them back to the authors. However if I saw something FANTASTIC, I had the right to move it forward to a real editor. Because I was interested and motivated, I didn’t always send back the formula rejection letter. Sometimes I really liked a story or a style of writing, but knew it had no chance at our firm (which mostly made money printing glorified cat calendars). In those instances, I would write heartfelt feedback and suggest alternate routes. But in the event that I read a submission that was ridiculously full of spelling and grammatical errors, I also reserved the right to reply with devastating frankness and discouragement. Sometimes I just had a bad day and was frustrated by my lowly position in the publishing house, and envious that I wasn’t spending my time at home writing like all these submitters. So if you receive a devastating rejection letter, don’t take it personally. Unless your spelling and grammar sucks. Then you really should just quit.

Rejection doesn’t mean that your material is bag. Sometimes publishers like publishing what’s going to make them money. There were many errors found in Shades of Grey, however, sex sells and publishers know this. People that read Shades of Grey admitted that they never read poetry, and that they weren’t avid readers.

Thanks for sharing this post with the writer’s sphere, it clearly serves its purpose to rejuvenate the soul of the writer who has experienced deconstructive criticism. Regarding James Joyce, I was fond of A Portrait of the Artist…because he personified the voice of the times, at the turn of the century, similar to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, which was to choose individualism over group-thinking, prefaced on disillusionment from the social & religious institutions of their times. I’m not saying that their character’s choices were right or wrong, but I am saying those two writers were able to capture the voice of internal conflicts of their times. Us writers may profit from this. In the school of business, strategic management requires analyzing the remote environment to discern what’s trending. This leads managers to identify competitive methods to gain added value to their business. In the world of music, I liken this theory to the production of a song that falls into two genres, a hybrid.

One may consider publishers to be like middle level managers who look at historical data to project what will happen in the 1 to 5 years. As one of my professors once said, doing that is like driving a car while staring at the rear view mirror. To be prepared for the future, we can look at the world around us and see what’s trending. I’d say that is essentially what writers have done all along, apart from historical/nonfiction works.

And while many of us would fall under the category of “chasing fame,” or looking for some good ole “bread on the table” for our creative works, the fact that we have created a work of art which we can share with others, entertain others with, and hold on our bookshelves is like a trophy in its own rights, and is one we can all be proud of.

Thus, I say write and write and write some more, because fame may come knock, knock, knocking at your door. you may have a message that will one day strike a chord with many, many people who’ll say it is your writing that they adore.

Great post. Thank you. Makes you wonder what a critic is actually for. I’ve not known any that have ever had a statue erected in their honor. Critics criticize. Writers write. Readers read. Two out of three is good!

Okay, okay, I will persevere! I haven’t even submitted anything to anyone yet, really. Except a tiny magazine a couple years back. They never said anything. Which constitutes rejection. Thanks for the reminder that believing in your own voice – your own spark of “divine fire” – is the first step to getting anywhere. And thanks for the follow :)

Funny, just yesterday I printed out every entry on my site, and was surprised to find it was as thick as a book; I actually thought to myself, I should try to get this published. I have since changed my mind. LOL.

This is a great post! I heard some of these at a lecture a while back, but nice to see so many of these in print. A reminder that we take too many things personally, rather than believing in ourselves.

This post was eye opening and extremely inspiring to me. I will keep all of the above famous names in mind, as a matter of fact, I am printing this and placing it above my computer for encouragement. Hope that is okay. Haven’t gotten my manuscript to the point of submission yet, but this post incites me to keep working on it. Thanks for the visit to my blog and the follow!

This is, bizarrely, reassuring. I wonder, though, how many aspiring academics would persist after so many rejections. I once found a most hilarious reply by a frustrated Author to the Editor of a scientific journal. Here is a link: http://wp.me/p1YSjr-g2

Rejection letters are a right of passage for writers. I just finshed reading Stephen King’s “On Writing”; and he talks about the many rejection letters skewered on a nail over his desk….great book, by the way! I really enjoyed the posts….and look forward to the next one.

Very interesting and entertaining! I believe Tolkien noted in a foreword that LOTR was roundly denounced by certain parties who had read it, “or at least had critiqued it.” Writing is something I have done since I learned to read and I do it because I am impelled; I think Van Gogh, as an extreme example, persisted in his art because of inner compulsion to discover and reveal beauty and bliss on canvas that did not exist in his three-dimensional world.

The perfect balm for a rejection letter that I got last week saying that my business parable is too short for a traditional publisher to touch even though the book that is its closest competitor is less than half the length and it has sold something like 26 million copies.

Looks like I am in good company. Who could not want to be associated with Dr. Seuss, J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, and “The Help” author, Kathryn Stockett? I’m proud to receive my rejections. It means I am actively working in the publishing field. Recently I received two “good” rejections.

Two agents commented positively and specifically about my work. Of course, I wasn’t real excited about the next two agents who sent generic letters. But I know there is an agent and a publisher who will want my manuscript, “Prisoner Without Bars: Conquering Traumatic Brain Injury.”

It always helps me feel at peace when I see that other people share about the struggle of rejection. It’s such an intimidating aspect of any creative endeavor that I think many shy away from it. This post was a great light!

I never thought that famous literary works from famous works also had their share of rejections. This is very encouraging especially to writers who haven’t let go of their dreams. They just have to try and try until they succeed.

Ahhh, yes. Rejections, something I’m quite familiar about. I’m at about 10. I wish I had saved them all so that one day when I finally make it, I can laugh at all the rejections. Great post. Nice reminder that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. Unpublished authors and starving artists alike, we must persist!

As an aspiring writer who already sent out a manuscript to a number of publishers I’d actually be honored to get a rejection letter, or any sign of life from a publisher for that matter…hell, at this point I’d be happy if they replied to my manuscript with a restraining order;)
Thanks for the post…very inspiring!

Thank you for this wonderful post that I had not read before.
Just had a spat with an editor , who does not know editing , claimed to be an agent and because I refused to cough up money , berated my writing , called my poetry obscene.
It left me with such a bitter taste , I had given up on my novel 10 years ago , I wanted to give up again. Second thoughts after reading this.

Interesting post Cristian but, for me, even more interesting are the comments; I’ve read them all. But I’m just a fascinated onlooker; I write for my own pleasure and have no interest in being ‘published’ except on my own blog. The exception is the occasional children’s story, all of which are written for specific children so I am interested in whether they enjoy them.
Of course when I wrote for money, not fiction, I would have been upset to get a rejection letter because it might have meant I didn’t eat.